Outdoor Living

We have friends who, when invited to our house for dinner, arrive with blankets and fleeces on the assumption we may be eating outdoors. It may be because we are from the Maritimes originally but whatever the reason we both feel almost an obligation to be outside the house whenever it is fit to be. One of the big stumbling blocks for us in looking for a townhouse was that we don't have traditional row houses in our housing repertoire. Our townhouses are all reasonably new developments with very limited private outdoor space in favour of common grounds that are looked after by the strata. So we had to get our heads wrapped around living on a balcony which just wasn't resonating favourably. We were very taken with one property that had only a 6x12 deck and thankfully someone put an offer on it before we got around to it or we would already be looking for a new house. In this complex we've moved into all the units have an entry courtyard of some description and a good sized balcony or even two. We have looked at about 10 of the units over the last few years knowing it is an attractive development but we were pretty fussy about what we wanted, a south facing end unit. We bought this one before the listing ink was dry because of the outdoor space, it is that important to us, and then spent a nominal fortune changing the house to suit us. 

the spruce tree and too small table space

nice enough but a bit tired

As with most things the strengths are also the weaknesses in this place: it is at the very end of the row adjacent to a busy street so we don't feel like we are in a development but we get traffic noise; it faces south and west so the light is wonderful but it gets hot so we had to install a wicked expensive motorized awning for the west windows. The courtyard patio here is one of the biggest we've seen and we were going to develop it next year but suddenly it's been done. The spruce tree was always dropping needles and the roots were heaving the bricks so it came down a week ago and then we heard of a young guy who was between jobs and would do the digging labour for a reasonable amount of money, we were able to find almost-matching bricks, and there we are.

you could not imagine how much dirt came out of this modest excavation

the space emerging

Lots of people would have preferred the old look of the courtyard but, for us, the ability to entertain in a not-too-crowded space trumped the messy spruce tree, overgrown shrubs, half-dead roses, and rampant mint.

coming out our front door

coming in from the street

And on the other side of the house we don't have the expanse of sky that we used to have but it's not bad...

the Energizer bunny looking a bit bedraggled as he comes in the back door